Summer Snowflakes
by Adreus
Summary: discontinued — It starts in summer, like all important things do. —RikuKairi.
1. Summer

**Notes: **This should be a four parter. Depends entirely on if I get off my butt and write some more. It's... this is going to be a little angsty, and I'm not trying to bash Sora because I love him to pieces, but... he's going to get hurt. So is Riku. And so will Kairi.

_Kingdom Hearts _is property of Square Enix and Disney, I do not claim any rights.

* * *

><p><em>Summer Snowflakes - Summer<em>

* * *

><p>It starts in summer, like all important things do.<p>

He misses their childhood and their innocence, but Riku supposes he'll get over it. He wouldn't change how things went – they're together now, they're home, and Riku gets a whole summer to himself and Sora and Kairi, so they'll have some time together before school starts and Riku has to go to the private academy across the street to Kairi's and Sora to the one next door.

Or, at least, that's what the plan _was_; it all sort of hinged on Sora's ability to pass his entrance exam: if he didn't, his parents planned on sending him for remedial courses… and that's exactly how it went down. The trio is reduced to spending nights together and days apart, and admittedly, Riku's a little annoyed at Sora for screwing things up. He planned on spending every waking moment before school started with his two best friends – he's sick of being alone.

But he deals with it, and actually, it's not all that bad. He's been through worse.

Riku takes to spending most of his days doing absolutely nothing of purpose: he likes to swim out to the playground and lie on the beach, stretched out on the sand. He likes to close his eyes tight and take in the sunlight, breathe in the air, let the sounds around him take him away to days long lost and adventures long forgotten. The waves, the birds, the children playing around him with their families and friends – this is what the Destiny Islands sounds like, this is his home, and this is only one of the things he missed most when he was away, and that's good enough to keep him at bay until dusk, when Kairi and Sora show up together in their tiny boat and they all camp out until two in the morning when they sneak back home.

It's become a daily cycle, see; Riku wakes up and he has breakfast, says hi to his dad and tells his mom about whatever dream he had last night. Then he says he's off to meet his friends and he promises he won't disappear again, and he leaves for the rest of the day. Swims off to the island and finds his usual spot under the palm tree. Sometimes, he'll bring a book in a plastic bag and read it on a palmtop. Other times he'll dig up the notebook he hid in the corner of their secret hideout and write something he'd thought of the night before. Every day is just as blank as the one before it until sunset, until the time that he sees the lone boat coming towards the island as the others all left, the silhouette of Kairi and Sora close together and laughing without him.

They don't mean to hurt him, he knows that. He's not angry with them—how can he be? He's the atoner, the one who started all of this, and his happiness was second to their's—but there's still an ache in his heart every time he sees them like that. Every time they're alone and happy and in love (he knows they are, how can they not be? She's Kairi and he's Sora and sometimes he's still not sure which one he's jealous of), there's still an ache and he has to look away and close his eyes to hide his latest lie – this one to himself – and smile as he climbs up or climbs down to greet them.

He thinks it's his own fault, because it gets worse every day, but he ignores it under the summer sunlight and thinks of everything in the world that isn't Kairi's strawberry red hair. He thinks of her laughter instead; he thinks of her smile and her voice and how it feels when she hugs him tightly and tells him never to say it was all his fault again. He thinks about Kairi and the nights he spent curled up against her heartless body so long ago, weeping, and for all the world hoping that she'd come back to him.

He thinks about Kairi and he thinks about Sora and he thinks about himself and Riku decides he's fine. He's happy. He's jealous, sure, but that part of him – he knows it won't go away, ever, and he'll just live with it because Sora went through shit and Riku went through shit, but Kairi… she isn't so scarred, and he doesn't want to – there isn't any way he can possibly – he –

Riku can't even bring his thoughts together. They're too scattered; too complicated and unsorted, too ambitious and strange, and oh, dear god, he can just imagine it being him and her in that boat at sunset and wouldn't that be amazing?

Riku's eyes snap open to the brilliant sunlight and his heart does cartwheels as he stops his fantasy, right then and there. He groans and thinks that he's being stupid and clumsy, mutters a curse. And that's when a shadow appears and blocks the sun.

"What're you groaning about?" comes the voice he hasn't been able to get out of his head since he was six years old. Riku looks to the source and finds Kairi bent to look down at him, smiling, her head tilted to the side in curiosity.

_How badly I want you_, thinks Riku, and he almost says it, too, but catches himself in time and answers instead, "My tan."

Kairi rolls her eyes, laughing. "Then get out of the sunlight, you girl."

"I don't feel like moving," Riku counters expertly, and closing his eyes again he smiles. "Man, Kairi, I was thinking."

"Again?" quips Kairi, sitting down cross-legged in front of him. At the sudden reinvasion of sunlight Riku's eyes crack open and he sees her again, sees her in her summer clothes and her short red hair (she cut it again, said the heat around her neck was getting to be too much to bear, and Riku had enough for the both of them anyway). She's got a drink with her, is sipping at her pink lemonade through a straw, like one of those juice pouches Sora's mom always packed for him when they were kids.

"Yeah," says Riku, and he finds himself sitting up to lean against the tree (it's a bad move: the trunk is thorny and generally uncomfortable, but Riku manages to find a somewhat comfortable position and retain his swagger). "We were dumbass kids. Where exactly did we plan on going when we set out for adventure with two coconuts and a mushroom?"

"It was your idea," Kairi says and laughs, and she's ridiculously beautiful and amazing and Riku doesn't have the time to even think about how it's his fault, because these moments – when it's just him and her – they're so rare nowadays, when he thinks about it. It's so rare for it to just be him and her and his heart is pounding so hard and so loudly that he wonders if she can hear it. If she can she's not saying anything, and that little hopeful boy in him wonders if maybe her heart is beating like his, too.

"Yeah, but you"—and Sora, can't forget Sora, but he's not here right now so why bother?—"weren't exactly opposed to it."

"Hey," says Kairi, pointedly, and there's the beginnings of a pout at her lips, "Sora and I looked up to you. We still kinda do."

It warms Riku's heart to the very core to hear things like that and, yeah, he feels a blush in his cheeks. He loves Kairi in more than one way; he loves her the way he loves Sora, too, like his very best friend, because that's what she is. That's what Sora and Kairi are, and Riku thinks he's ridiculously lucky to have friends like them, because they're not so easy to come by. He found that out the hard way.

"Yeah," he says in response, ripe with embarrassment, and after he says it he's only coherent enough to repeat, "Yeah."

The sun is starting to set and the sky is shades of reds and purples and oranges. People around the beach are picking up their kids and their picnic baskets and heading back to the boats, so soon the entire island will be empty except for Riku and Kairi and Sora when he gets here. Kairi stands up and offers Riku a hand, which he accepts, and there're shocks down his whole body, but that's to be expected.

But he doesn't let go once he's up.

Faster, faster, his heart beats faster and faster because Sora will be here soon, and then they won't—then he won't be able to—

"Kairi?" he asks, a little timidly, when she's about to leave his hand, about to walk forward to greet Sora—_her boyfriend, Sora's her _boyfriend—at the beach.

"What is it, Riku?" she asks, and his name, she says his _name_.

"I…" he stops, looks down, looks up again. "Please don't let go."


	2. Autumn

**Notes: **Man, I hope Kairi isn't coming off inconsistent with what I vision her as in this. It would probably help if we weren't limited to Riku, but unfortunately we're locked in the point of view of the mistress. Anyway... enjoy! Leave reviews if you like it, if you don't like it, if you hate my guts... whatever it is, I'm all, uh... eyes?

_Kingdom Hearts_ is property of Square Enix and Disney, I do not claim any rights.

* * *

><p><em>Summer Snowflakes<em>

* * *

><p>It starts in autumn, like all complicated things do.<p>

The summer becomes a terrific mess of red and silver and varying new rhythms of his heartbeat. Riku takes the indulgence—that one, beautiful, terrifying moment—and runs with it for himself as much as he can, which happens to be only twice more. He holds her hand and feels small and pathetic for the excitement that floods him, but the happiness outweighs the loathing, so he doesn't care. Still… He's not yet outgoing and he's not yet returned to his former pride, so he can't ask again – he remembers Kairi being lifeless and fragile and he's afraid that any one wrong move on his part will hurt her. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want to hurt anyone.

So Kairi lets him hold her hand once, as they wait together on the beach for Sora, but it turns out that's not all, that's not enough. Riku doesn't want her as a girlfriend—doesn't think he even deserves that—but he _does_ want her. He wants… he wants moments with her, things he can remember at night when he's too tired to fall asleep in the silence. Things that warm him up to the point when he doesn't need covers when the cool summer night breeze glides into his room through the open windows.

That's all he wants. Somehow, that's not all he gets.

The first time Riku asks her, she's a little surprised, but Kairi's fine with, happy with him, and he'll cherish that day on the beach forever. It was only one day and one moment and at the time Riku didn't think it would go anywhere, but… it does. After that day, he grows a little courageous; it comes from a source that he doesn't recognize, deep within his bones and his core, and he's probably flushing when he's looking embarrassedly in another direction, asking a second, a third time, "Hey…"

And she smiles and offers him her hand.

The fourth time, she doesn't even wait for him to ask; she just gives it to him, like it's his to hold, and he takes it, like it's his to take.

It's incredible.

And she knows he's in love with her. She knows he's head over heels, ten thousand percent in love. She knows it all, and really, by now, excepting Sora, who doesn't? But Kairi doesn't say anything, grants him bits and pieces of incredibly heart racing happiness whenever she can. It makes him go crazy, like his chest's about to burst, and suddenly nights at the campfire aren't as real. And yet they are. He still jokes with Sora and laughs and nothing's all that different between them, but he says some things and Kairi says some things that they never would've said before. And Sora's none the wiser. Sora's glad they spend time together when he's not there, because Riku and Sora and Kairi are best friends before Sora and Kairi are a couple.

Stolen glances. Smiles through glass. Holding hands on the beach when no one can see them. Joining him on the hammock big enough for five, closer than anyone but senseless Sora's ever been to him. They don't say anything about it aloud, not even to each other, but Riku and Kairi become closer, physically, mentally, throughout the secret summer days and it doesn't feel all that wrong. It doesn't feel all that right, either; it falls somewhere between guilt and glee. Riku's mostly maudlin. He's more cheerful than he's been in a long time, and he's completely incapable of hiding it. Kairi, however, stays pretty much the same.

He wonders why she does it; why Kairi ever gives him these small, innocent pleasures, why she makes it seem so _mutual_ (because Kairi's not _that _kind of girl, he knows she's not, how could she be?). He wonders if she thinks he deserves a break or a chance or a fleeting summer romance that he may never have the opportunity for again. He wonders how far he can go in this whirlwind of a world without it being too far, because he knows it all won't last but he doesn't know how strong he's allowed to build it.

When the leaves start to change their colors and the tourists start to leave, there's a panic that settles in his heart whenever he's alone. Every moment with Kairi is unadulterated pleasure; every moment with Sora is fleeting and fun; every moment alone is scary and sad, because school's about to start and soon they'll never be alone again. They'll never have reason to stay alone at the beach or be at each other's houses or laugh without Sora being around.

Come autumn, Riku thinks this is it – this is the end. The summer is over, and any summer love story has no place in reality, because summers and vacations exist in a universe separate from others; surrounded by dreams and a stronger smell of the sea.

Come autumn, Riku starts to hurt, knowing that this is stupid, that this is a game he plays with his own, stupid, lovesick heart that both he and his heart are going to lose. He doesn't blame Kairi, he doesn't blame Sora, he blames himself because he's stupid and dumb and always brings trouble upon himself.

Come autumn, Riku needs to end it. He needs to end it the only way he knows how – he needs to go one foot into the darkness before drowning himself in unmercifully pure light, before forcing himself to forget it ever happened, to look forward to a future that looks just as blank and scary as his past and present.

On the day school starts, Riku sees Kairi in her school uniform, moans, pushes her against the brick wall in the secluded corner of the abandoned building, and kisses her.


End file.
